Employees’ ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn

Even though employees were recognized as powerful brand ambassadors, research is scarce on the predictors of employee ambassadorship behavior. As the impressions about the company culture are primarily shaped by the content that employees share online, it is within the interest of the company to understand employees’ online behavior. Since networking sites such as LinkedIn allow employees to present themselves professionally, employees are more prone to engage with the companies here rather than via their personal social media accounts. This paper investigates the relationship between the predictors of organizational role, organizational identification, social media guidelines usage, concise social media guidelines and employees’ ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn. Furthermore, this paper reflects on forms of companies’ social media guidelines. The study explores 195 full-time employees' (56,9% females) ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn, using both close- and open-ended questions. Quantitative analysis was conducted to predict which factors influence employees’ ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn. Research suggests that organizational role affects employees’ ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn as high-skilled workers frequently share online their knowledge in their field, however, this relationship was not confirmed in this study. While high-skilled workers were found to identify with the company, organizational identification was found to not affect ambassadorship behavior. Social media usage proved to be a valuable mediator of a relationship between organizational role and employees’ ambassadorship behavior on LinkedIn as social media guidelines help employees to navigate the risks encountered when engaging online. On the contrary, concise social media guidelines are not a significant moderator of the relationship between social media guidelines usage and ambassadorship behavior. As found, employees are often exposed to informal social media guidelines. The paper employs thematic analysis to explore the forms of concise social media guidelines. As the results suggest, companies’ social media guidelines primarily include risks and brand style to assure that employees adhere to the online rules. Social media guidelines are primarily in a digital format however, some companies prefer spoken rules instead. As such, these findings hold practical implications given that the knowledge of the predictors of employees’ ambassadorship behavior can help companies in limiting the risks and encouraging their employees to become brand ambassadors on LinkedIn.